The Luckiest Coach on Earth

Out of Coaching Since 2005, Wisconsin's Alvarez Brings His Knack for Bowl Success Back to Pasadena

ENLARGE

Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez returns to the sideline to coach the Badgers for the first time since the 2005 season.
Associated Press

By

Ben Cohen

Updated Dec. 30, 2012 7:12 p.m. ET

The Stanford Cardinal are the favorite in Tuesday's Rose Bowl. But it is the Wisconsin Badgers—the unranked, 8-5, how-are-they-here Badgers—who have the advantage. That's because Wisconsin has an X factor on its side: a 66-year-old good-luck charm walking its sideline.

Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez, who is coming out of coaching retirement to lead the Badgers in this one game, is without question the luckiest coach in the history of the Rose Bowl. He is 3-0 there, once beating an unusually underwhelming opponent (22nd-ranked Stanford in 2000) and twice getting to Pasadena via fortunate tiebreakers in the Big Ten Conference race. This time Alvarez is there despite coaching his last game seven years ago.

It is as if all of the good fortune that has eternally eluded the Big Ten, which has won just 12 of its last 40 Rose Bowl appearances, has somehow been transferred to this one individual—though not to Wisconsin itself. The Badgers lost the Rose Bowl each of the last two years in torturous fashion under Bret Bielema, who replaced Alvarez before the 2006 season.

Bielema led Wisconsin to a third straight Big Ten title earlier this month, but then shockingly bolted for the vacant Arkansas job. Alvarez decided to stand in for him, further spicing up what was already a most unusual Rose Bowl.

Wisconsin only finished third this season in the Big Ten's Leaders division behind Ohio State and Penn State. But both were ineligible for the postseason because of rules violations, so the Badgers were bumped up to the Big Ten title game—where they routed Nebraska, 70-31, to get back to the only bowl game preceded by a parade of flowers.

"I told this team they don't have to apologize to anybody," Alvarez said. "Everybody knew before the season started what had to be done. Our guys did what they had to do."

Alvarez, who coached the Badgers from 1990 through 2005, is the central figure in Wisconsin football history. In that time, he took a program that was "flat on his back," in his words, and overhauled it into a stalwart that is now making its sixth Rose Bowl appearance in two decades, the most of any Big Ten school.

And Alvarez didn't just get to big bowl games. He is the only Wisconsin coach to have won the Rose Bowl. Among coaches with at least 11 bowl appearances, Alvarez's .727 winning percentage (an 8-3 record) is the highest in the history of college football.

But what really justifies his decision to hire himself for one last game is a trait that is often overlooked in coaches: luck. There are lucky sports coaches, and then there is Alvarez, who has the charmed Rose Bowl history of someone owed a million karmic favors from a past life.

Only because it had been so bad for so long did Wisconsin make the Rose Bowl for the first time under Alvarez during the 1993 season. Wisconsin and Ohio State finished with identical overall and conference records and even tied in their regular-season meeting. But at that time, the tiebreaker went to the team with the longest Rose Bowl drought. The Badgers hadn't made it since the 1962 season. In other words, they won by losing.

The same thing happened during the 1998 season. Wisconsin tied with Michigan and Ohio State atop the Big Ten, but the Wolverines and Buckeyes had both played in the Rose Bowl more recently. So the trip fell again to the Badgers—though not without controversy.

Before the game, commentator Craig James knocked Wisconsin as "the worst team to ever play in the Rose Bowl." Wisconsin's win over UCLA gave Alvarez the ammunition to return fire afterward. "We're at least the second-worst," he said.

In 1999, with Heisman Trophy winner Ron Dayne at running back, Wisconsin had no need for tiebreakers; it won the Big Ten championship outright. Its reward was Stanford, ranked 22nd, the lowest-ranked Rose Bowl team since 1984. Wisconsin won, 17-9.

A little bit of Alvarez's luck might be just what Wisconsin needs, considering its last two Rose Bowl appearances. In 2011, they lost to Texas Christian by two after a failed two-point-conversion attempt in the fourth quarter. Last year, with current Seattle Seahawks sensation Russell Wilson at quarterback, the Badgers lost 45-38 to Oregon when the clock ran out as they were driving to tie things up.

That was nothing compared with the misfortune of this year's Wisconsin team. Three of the Badgers' losses came in overtime; the other two were decided by a field goal. As such, 11-2 Stanford is only a touchdown favorite over Wisconsin, despite the Badgers' mediocre record and rusty coach.

Even when Bielema left, Alvarez says he didn't consider returning to the sideline until Wisconsin's players asked him to. Wisconsin's coordinators will call the plays Tuesday, but Alvarez gorged on Stanford tape, oversaw practices and installed a game plan in between hiring Utah State coach Gary Andersen to replace Bielema.

"It's like getting back on a bike," he said.

Alvarez may be a human rabbit's foot, but there is another reason for his bowl success. In college football, bowl games and regular-season games are completely different beasts because of the weeks off between games. Alvarez's record is unparalleled because of how he paces his team's preparation, said Brooks Bollinger, a University of Pittsburgh assistant coach who was Wisconsin's quarterback in the 2000 Rose Bowl.

"This setting and him coming in with this group will be right in his wheelhouse," Bollinger said. "If anybody can do it, he can."

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